Summary
With a successful year
behind us and a momentous
one ahead, it is with
excitement and gratitude
that the Leslie-Lohman
Museum of Gay and Lesbian
Art (LLMGLA) presents its
2016 Annual Report.
Our efforts over the past
year have dramatically
advanced the Museum’s
five strategic goals:

After a five-year period of intense planning
and change, we received full museum
accreditation from the New York State
Board of Regents in July. This makes
LLMGLA the first and only accredited
museum for LGBTQ art in the world–
with a clearly-defined mission, credibility
and support in the museum community,
and a strong commitment to exhibiting
artists and preserving LGBTQ art.
This year we presented more than
thirty-eight exhibitions in our three spaces:
the Main Gallery, Wooster Street Window
Gallery, and Prince Street Project Space.
We featured more than 350 artists, more
than 30% of whom were female, trans,
or artists of color. We traveled two of
our exhibitions, Stroke: From Under the
Mattress to the Museum Walls to the
GLBT History Museum in San Francisco,
and Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and
Community to both the Mills Gallery at the
Boston Center for the Arts and the Maryland
Institute College of Art. We created Looking
Back/Looking Forward: NYC’s Gay Pride
Parades 1979-1995 for the Hudson County
Community College in New Jersey to exhibit
in the spring of 2016.
We also have had works on loan featured
in exhibitions at several other institutions,
including the Schwules Museum, Berlin;
the LWL-Museum fur Kunst unk Kulture,
Münster, Germany; the Maccarone Gallery,
New York; the ONE National Gay & Lesbian
Archives, Los Angeles; the Kunsthalle,
Helsinki, Finland; the Museum of the City of
New York, New York; the Hunter College Art
Galleries, New York; the LaMaMa Gallery,
New York; and the Patti and Rusty Rueff
Galleries, Purdue University.

LESLIE-LOHMAN MUSEUM

Along the historic cobblestone-lined
corner of Wooster Street and Grand Street,
construction has commenced on the
dramatic expansion of the Museum. This
expansion increases the size of our current
space from 3,300 to 5,600 square feet,
effectively doubling our exhibition space.
With two major galleries, not only will the
frequency of our exhibitions increase, but
will do so without the need to close the
Museum for (de)installations. We will be
open continuously. In addition, we will
have enhanced storage and preservation
facilities and expanded educational
initiatives and public programming.
We are thrilled that the doors to our new
exhibition space will open to the public in
early 2017 with a major historic collection
show, featuring works from our collection
acquired over the past thirty years.

3 Increased Visibility
In early 2016, we began a major campaign
to increase our public visibility and engaged
SUTTON, a New York-based public relations
firm. With SUTTON’s assistance, we have
seen a dramatic increase in our general
press coverage and received reviews from a
number of leading outlets.
Art in America
Flavorpill
The New York Times
TimeOut New York
Artforum
Gothamist
NY1
VICE
ARTINFO
Huffington Post

Along with our expansion, we
have unveiled a new graphic identity
transforming the face of our Museum.
We hired the design firm PS New York to
design and create a new and cohesive visual
identity introducing a sleek and streamlined
look while retaining elements our founders’
original design and vibrant color palette.
Unified with a refreshed new logo, we have
united our digital, physical, and mediawide image to reinforce our public presence
as the distinctly valuable and unique
institution that we are.

This past
year was also
a milestone for
grants received
from city, state,
and private
foundations.

4 Expanded Supporter Base
This past year was also a milestone
or grants received from city, state, and
private foundations. To date, we have
received grants for 2016, 2017, and 2018
from the following:

$25,000

$16,860

Arcus Foundation
Educational Programming

NYC Department of Cultural Affairs
Leslie–Lohman Speaker Series

$50,000

$5,000

Henry Luce Foundation
Catalogue and digitize the collection

NYC City Discretionary Funds
from Council Member Daniel Dromm
Leslie–Lohman Speaker Series

$37,000
John Burton Harter Foundation
On the Domestic Front Exhibition
catalog and The Archive

The Museum continues to strive for
greater diversity in every aspect of the
organization,including of our audience,
staff/board, and artists collected and
exhibited. Presently 14% of the artists in
the Museum’s permanent collection are
lesbian, transgender, or artists of color.
With the creation of the HOHDAF the
Museum will acquire high-quality works
by non-male artists with the goal of
increasing this gender and diversity mix
by 10% annually.
Our diverse staff now numbers over
twenty with full and part-time employees.
Our internship and fellowship programs
have offered hands-on museum experience
to ten students from various colleges and
universities across the US. We have a strong
volunteer team of over twenty-five to assist
with events, exhibitions, cataloging, and
special events. We’ve increased our board
to thirteen with the addition of Daniel S.
Berger, MD and André St. Clair.

We’ve also made great strides in
diversity among our audience. About 50%
of our visitors identify as non-male and
39% consider themselves non-white.
We were pleasantly surprised to see a
large number of visitors under 40 years old
(approx. 70%), and we are clearly attractive
across generations—which bodes well for
preserving our mission.
With Museum Director Hunter O’Hanian’s
recent departure, longtime Board Member
and Museum supporter Meryl A. Allison
has stepped in as our Interim Director,
overseeing several impressive exhibitions
and proving instrumental in the ongoing
expansion process. We are grateful for
our continuously close relationship with
Hunter, who remains with us as an active
board member.
With such major transformations
underway, we are extremely proud of
our remarkably productive year of 2016,
and we remain enthusiastic about the
exciting new prospects ahead of us.
Our accomplishments this year reflect
the tremendous potential that our talented
staff and board wield to champion the
Museum as the leading institution of
LGBTQ art for years to come.

$10,000
NYS Council on the Arts
Leslie–Lohman Speaker Series

$6,000

$22,000

Keith Haring Foundation
Family Day and educational
programming

NYS Council on the Arts
Museum Operating Support

With this proven track record of success,
we expect to continue to grow our support.
This year, in honor of our outgoing Museum
Director and to build on his efforts
to increase diversity, we initiated the
Hunter O’Hanian Diversity Acquisition
Fund (HOHDAF). The fund has received
approximately $40,000 in donations and
pledges, including capstone contributions
by Ronald Csuha and Cecil Yarbrough,
Charles W. Leslie, Alix L.L. Ritchie and Marty
Davis, and Louis Wiley, Jr., along with full
support in the form of donations by the
Board of Trustees and the Museum staff.

Exhibitions
Main Gallery
In our Main Gallery, we presented five major
exhibitions. On the Domestic Front: Scenes
of Everyday Queer Life which opened in
August 2015 featured some seventy works
drawn mostly from the Leslie-Lohman
Museum collection and addressing the
question, “What do gay people do when
they’re not having sex?” These diverse
works demonstrated the uniqueness as
well as the universality of everyday queer
life. Medium of Desire brought together
the work of fourteen contemporary artists
from China, Japan, Greece, Russia, Italy,
Germany, Great Britain, and the U.S., each
uniquely expressing the theme of desire
through the medium of photography and
video. Our spring exhibition, The 1970s:
The Blossoming of a Queer Enlightenment,
showcased more than 110 works from
the Museum’s collection and explored the
vibrant and liberating decade between
the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and the first
rumblings of the emerging AIDS crisis heard
in 1980, which changed the nature of sexual
relationships to the present day.

A Deeper Dive presented a closer look
at nine artists featured in the national
touring exhibition, Art AIDS America, which
showed the work of over one hundred
artists made in the 1980s when the first
cases of HIV were reported in the United
States. This exhibit provided viewers an
opportunity to engage with a breadth of
artworks addressing HIV/AIDS in a manner
previously unimaginable and sought to
unearth the indelible mark AIDS has left
on our collective consciousness. We closed
out the year with Cut Ups: Queer Collage
Practices, bringing together works by an
intergenerational group of fourteen queer
and feminist artists who each explore
collage with diverse, erotically inclined
tactics. The works in this show draw from
print culture and pornography, dating from
the era of gay and women’s liberation
to the present.
We were pleased to show work from JEB
(Joan B. Biren), Tee A. Corinne, Alice Austin,
Dorothy Burger, John Burton Harter, Cathy
Cade, Paul Cadmus, Diana Davies, John
Dugdale, Karen Findley, Duncan Grant, Red
Grooms, Keith Haring, Don Herron, Peter
Hujar, Angela Jimenez, G.B. Jones, Deborah
Kass, Glenn Ligon, Robert Mapplethorpe,
Meadow, Harvey Milk, Ann P Meredith, Ellen
Shumsky, George Stavrinos, Andy Warhol,
Patrick Webb, and many others.

Prince Street Project Space supports queer
artists by giving them a venue to show
new and innovative work. With twenty
shows and exhibitions this past year, we
presented Prince Street Project Space
diverse programing through zine and book
launches, multimedia installations, and
performances. We hosted the Queer Art
Mentorship Annual Exhibition, Antonio Lopez:
A Cocktail Photo Party with El Museo Del
Barrio, and partnered with 80WSE Gallery,
an extension of NYU’s Steinhardt School, to
present Vaginal Davis’s re-interpretation of
The Magic Flute. A variety of exhibitions—
from GENDERLESS, a series of self-portraits
by Ayakamay using herself as a subject to
explore the cultural complexities of gender,
to The Gym, My Models, and Me, a series of
sensual images of gym-built young men, and
on to Leon Mostovoy’s Transfigure, a project
of corporal self-expression presented as
an experimental visual feast celebrating
the body and transcending the the gender
binary—all presented the work of diverse
artists exploring sexuality and gender.

Wooster Street
Window Gallery
Wooster Street Window Gallery is a
street-level gallery on view 24/7.
In inti-mate, Sidney Mullis’ video, the
artist performed “sexy” as invented
animals, based upon alternative biology
and rap musics’ negative messages to
women. Legend in My Living Room featured
specially commissioned photographic
portraits of older LGBTQ adults in their
home environments by Magnum Foundation
Fellow Jasper Briggs. The portraits of
seven subjects (ages 53-84) displayed
in the Museum’s windows reflected
personal stories of struggle, triumph, and
perseverance. The project was co-curated
by Steven G. Fullwood, Schomburg Center
Associate Curator of Manuscripts, Archives
and Rare Books and founder of ITLA, and
Peter “Souleo” Wright, program coordinator
of SAGE Center Harlem and cultural
tastemaker. And finally Cobi Moules, in
Self-Portraits 2009-2015, created a space
for personal significance and a trans and
queer presence; the repetition of the
self-portrait documents and focuses
singular moments within the larger process
of transition. In 2017, we will open a second
window gallery space connected with
our newly expanded space.

Collections
Our Collections Department
is the first and only museum
department dedicated to the
stewardship of LGBTQ art. The
Museum has a collection of
over 30,000 objects; a research
library of over 2,000 books on
LGBTQ artists; and an archive
of material and information
on over 2,800 different artists.
Concurrent with our application
for the NYS Board of Regents
accrediting, we have spent the
last four years cultivating the
collection to meet museum
standards. We have catalogued
over 21,000 individual items and
enhanced our collection policies
and procedures.
The generous grant from the Henry Luce
Foundation has enabled us to bring on
board additional expertise to our team.
The fund will enable staff to improve the
accuracy of our database and allow for
greater access by researchers and curators.
We are delighted to have added several
new artists to our collection this year, and
these include Lois Bielefeld, JEB (Joan E.
Biren), Deborah Bright, Diana Davies, Tracy
Nunez, Robert Giard, Greer Lankton, Go
Mishima, Stanley Stellar, Kay Tobin, and
Margaret Rose Vendryes.
The strength of our collection is
evidenced by current outgoing loans
to various institutions, three of them
international. The Museum is currently
developing a 2017 loan with the National
Gallery of Australia for forty objects to be
included in a large touring exhibition.
Although Leslie-Lohman is proud of
its collection, as the Museum grows it
has set as a priority to bring in a more
diverse group of artists, including
female, transgender, and artists of color.
Our Collections Department has committed
to build the collection through acquisitions,
gifts, and donations.

11

Education
The Leslie-Lohman Museum
has broadened our educational
and programmatic offerings
both within the walls of
the Museum and beyond.
Educational programming
included programming specific
to exhibitions, the LeslieLohman Speakers Series,
Family Day programming, guest
docent tours, and a new off-site
collaboration with the Fashion
Institute of Technology.

Amos Badertscher
William - a shirt designed by Greg Boy in the red shirt. 1985, Color photograph, 24 x 18 in.
Gift of the artist, Collection of Leslie-Lohman Museum

The Leslie-Lohman Speakers Series, now
in its third season, hosted David J. Getsy,
Hunter Reynolds, and Aaron McIntosh,
whose program, Queer + Southern: Roots
+ Diasporas, addressed the historic and
contemporary creative cultural production
of queer Southern artists. Our 2015/2016
season featured Attila Richard Lukacs,
Barbara Hammer, the NYC film premiere of
Let the Record Show, a powerful story of
New York City, artists, and AIDS. There were
also lectures by Leon Mostovoy, Amelia
Jones, and Sophia Wallace. The spring 2017
Series features Fire Island Artist Residency
Co-Founder and Director Chris Bogia and
several FIAR alumni to discuss the impact
this unique residency has had on LGBTQ
artists since its inception in 2011. In April,
Susie Bright, author, editor, and contributor
to the feminist magazine On Our Backs, will
offer a dynamic, intergenerational lecture
with interdisciplinary artist and educator
A.K. Burns.
During the run of The 1970s: the
Blossoming of a Queer Enlightenment, the
Museum curated a series of lectures, Takinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;
it to the Streets: Performing Public Protest,
On Performing Identity, which explored
public space as a site for civic engagement
and artistic resistance, made even more
timely by the tragic shootings in Orlando
that preceded the panel by just a few days.
The 2nd Wave: Feminist Legacies, moderated
by Deborah Bright, featured Flavia Rando,
Leah DeVun, and Clarity Haynes, and
presented incredible images spanning

over forty years of feminist cultural
production. At Gay Life in 1970s NYC,
a panel discussed what it was like to live
and make art during this prolific decade.
During A Deeper Dive, programming included
a panel on Brian Buczak, and lectures and
talks by participating artists John Dugdale,
Ann P Meredith, and Deborah Kass.
Guest docents who led tours this year
ranged from poet and performance artist
Pamela Sneed to cultural producers and
artists Jack Waters, Peter Cramer, Christina
Schlesinger, and Sur Rodney Sur.
With a keen interest in examining our
history and imagining possible futures,
our education programs demonstrate our
commitment to fostering dialogue between
diverse LGBTQ artists, their work, and our
expanding audience.

Without the support of our generous donors we would
not be able to carry out our programs of excellence.

Donors

Race

26%

Thank You!

$5,216
$1,281,065

Source: 2015 audited financial statements.
The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian is a charitable corporation organized under the laws of the State
of New York. The Museum is exempt from taxation under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code and as such,
all gifts made to it are fully deductible, as allowed by law. Each year, the Foundation’s financial records are subject
to an independent financial audit.. View the Foundation’s IRS 990 tax return at Guidestar.org.

These lists represent all donations received between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016. While every attempt is made to secure the accuracy of these lists, we apologize for any errors that may occur.
Please direct any corrections or inquiries to Deputy Director for External Relations Jerry Kajpust at jerry@leslielohman.org.

Lesbian Herstory Archive
LGBT Bar Association of
Greater New York
Museum Association of New York
Museum of the City of New York
New York Charities
NGLCCNY (National Gay and Lesbian
Chamber of Commerce New York)
North American Reciprocal Museums
NYC & Company
NYU Fales Library
ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives
at the USC Libraries
Out Professionals
Queer Mentorship Program

SAGE (Services and Advocacy
for GLBT Elders)
Soho Arts Network
Stonewall Library & Archives, Ft.
Lauderdale, FL
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender
Community Center
Trinity Place Shelter
University at Buffalo, The State
University of New York
Visual AIDS

Arcus Foundation
Bank of America Matching Gift Program
Commonwealth Fund Matching Gift Program
Henry Luce Foundation
IBM Matching Gift Program
John Burton Harter Foundation
Keith Haring Foundation
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
New York State Council on the Arts
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals
Matching Gift Program
Stonewall Community Foundation
Time Warner Matching Gift Program